Remove Target to Release Acunetix Licensed Target Count

Acunetix vulnerability scanner license is counted by the target number. Once consumed your target numbers, you wont be able to add new target into your scanner to do another scan. There are some specific rules to count your web applications as licensed targets although sometimes it is quite confusing. Here are rules from Acunetix website about target:

A target is a website, web application, server, or network device that you would like to scan for security vulnerabilities. In general, a target license is required for each web application and for each domain. For licensing purposes, the following rules apply:

• localhost and 127.0.0.1 consume 1 target
• example.com and www.example.com count as 1 target
• https and http count as 1 target
• Subdomains are different targets, e.g. www.example.com and www2.example.com consume 2 targets
• Different URLs in the same domain count as 1 target, e.g. www.example.com and www.example.com/blog/ consume 1 target
• Different ports for the same address count as 1 target, e.g. www.example.com:8080 and www.example.com:8888 consume 1 target
• Acunetix test sites (vulnweb.com) do not consume any targets
• There is an upper limit to the number of targets you can create, irrespective of how many variations are created following the above rules; this limit is equal to 5 times the number of targets purchased and allowed by your license

For some reasons, you tested your scanner with a test website just like I did to test with "vulnweb.com", one count might still be consumed as a target. 

As you can see from license page, it shows 10 out of 10 licensed targets has been used.

If that does happen, you will need to follow following steps to delete your target.

Step 1. Reactivate License

You can copy your license key first, then  click the "Update License" button . The license Key textbox will be empty so you can paste your copied license key there. 

After that, click 'Apply License' button, your Acunetix license will be reactivated.

Step 2. Delete the test target  ("vulnweb.com").

Go to Targets page to delete the vulnweb.com target. 

Unfortunately, even you deleted, it will still be counted as one target if you did not restart the service. 

Step 3. Restart the “Acunetix” service

You can restart the Acunetix service to refresh your licensed targets count , or you can install the available update which also cause license recounted on your system.